The One That Got Away
by AGoldenCharm
Summary: In another life/I would make you stay/So I don't have to say/You were the one that got away. Warning: Angst


Mike Chang should have figured out ages ago that this day would come. Some ridiculous part of his brain had pushed it aside for so long, only to prolong the inevitable- that he would be getting dressed in his second nicest suit alone in front of the mirror with every emotion he's locked up swimming dangerously in his midst, taunting him. For what, he isn't sure. Maybe the past. Maybe distance.

As he slowly works on his tie- the insanely expensive one his mom had bought for him in China despite his best efforts to assure her it wasn't necessary; she always doted on him in ways he never felt he deserved- he wonders how today will pan out. He's sure he'll see several familiar faces. Faces he hasn't thought of in years. Each tinged with memories he's set aside to make room for new ones.

But in all honesty, there's only one face he's both dreading and excitedly anticipating- and she's the star of tonight. The whole reason he's standing by himself in his room in a suit when all he wants to do it is curl up in his ratty PJs and sleep.

Nick, his best friend from college, keeps telling him that he needs to get over himself and stop throwing these little pity parties whenever everyone else is being happy. Nick's just _that_ kind of guy. The guy who forces you on your feet when you've been sitting on your ass at some street corner curb for way too long. The guy who drags you to house parties and hands you shot after shot even though you had planned on watching _Singing in the Rain_ on your laptop for the four hundredth time. And even though Mike appreciates Nick in many, many ways, Nick's logic is also severely flawed. It's not _himself_ that Mike needs to get over.

He checks his watch- he's got half an hour to catch the train that will take him from San Francisco to Los Angeles. As much as he'd like to mysteriously miss his train and be forced to stay at home, he also can't stop himself from walking down to the train station with his overnight bag over his shoulder, kicking rocks out of his way as he goes.

* * *

The train ride isn't long but it still sucks. A lot. And when he finally gets to LA and has to take a taxi to the country club, he finds himself loathing public transportation more than he really should. For no reason.

But the cab driver's a nice guy- a scruffy looking man with his right incisor missing- and he strikes up carefree conversation the way a cabbie _should_. But Mike can only give halfhearted answers that don't really leave any room for further discussion.

When the driver drops him off at the country club, Mike can kind of tell that he's glad to get rid of him. No one wants a depressingly grim client clouding up their cab.

The country club looks gorgeous, which doesn't really surprise him at all. It's very white- pristine and well-kept, just the way it should be, and it looks gorgeous under the glow of the sunshine that seeps from the sky right before sunset. The buildings are symmetrical and the gardens are colorful- everything is exactly where it should be and there's barely a leaf out of place.

There's a slow flow of people walking toward the tallest, narrowest building, the one where Mike assumes the ceremony will take place. According to his watch, it's not supposed to start for another forty-five minutes or so, which means he's just as early as he thought he'd be. But he figured he'd use the time to catch up with old classmates and people he hasn't seen in forever. Not yet recognizing any familiar faces, he follows the crowd.

There's a tap on his shoulder right before he's about to enter the building and he whirls around.

"Mike!"

A smile breaks out across his face for the first time today as he kind of does an awkward bro-hug with Sam Evans, who he hasn't seen in several years- not since Kurt and Blaine's engagement party.

He genuinely misses Sam. A lot. The best part about being friends with Sam is he's got a quality for giving someone space when they need it (which Nick sorely lacks) and Mike kind of wishes they were still as close as they used to be because he _misses_ Sam.

"Sam," Mike says warmly after pulling back, "How have you been, man?"

"Good, good," Sam affirms, adjusting and readjusting his cuff links, "It's good to see you dude."

"Same goes," he nods, "How's the business been?"

Sam and a couple of guys he went to college with had started up a landscaping business that no one had believed would work out but eventually took off like _crazy_. They've been wildly successful, last Mike's heard, and he couldn't have been more proud of Sam.

"Great. Busy. Insane," Sam rattles off with a grin. But it soon disappears, "How have _you_ been?"

"Um... Good. Work's been overwhelming," Mike sighs. Ever since going off to college to study chemistry while joining as many dance troupes as he could manage, then eventually realizing that the entertainment industry was basically Narnia to him- unattainable in every sense possible- he's been focusing solely on his studies. While attempting to snag a bachelor's in chemistry, he took his DATs, filled out his dental school applications, and sent them off with his fingers crossed behind his back. And damn it all if he didn't get in- hard work paid off, he supposed. Never would have guessed. then again, he had never spent so much time on _school_ before, either. Now, he's graduated from dental school and in his first year of residency, and still surprised that he's ever managed to make it this far.

Sam shakes his head vigorously, "No. Not work. How have you been about... _this_?" Sam gestures cryptically toward... well, toward the entire country club.

"Um... I haven't really given it much thought, I guess-"

"Bullshit."

Slightly taken aback, Mike stares.

"I mean, sorry," Sam apologizes, frowning, "It's just... There's no way you didn't 'give it much thought'. I'd bet my entire business that you haven't been able to get this out of your head."

Mike locks his jaw stubbornly, "Your entire business? That's a pretty risky wager."

"Yeah, well I'm 100% sure of myself. So. Have you ever met the guy?"

Mike shakes his head, "Never seen him before in my life."

"Me neither. You sure you're all right?"

Sighing, Mike rubs his eyes wearily, "I've been okay. You don't- you don't have to worry about me or anything."

Sam gives him a wary glance, but lets the issue drop.

"So," Mike says, trying to transition into a new topic, "How has _your _love life been? You still going out with that Kate girl?"

"Nah," he shrugs, "We broke it off months ago. Turns out she has no intention of settling down or starting a family. Not what I'm looking for."

Mike grins, "Look at you, getting all domestic. Guess you're really growing up, huh?"

"We," Sam corrects, "_We_ are growing up."

Mike's about to retort when a very loud, very familiar voice interrupts.

"Mike! Sam! Oh my god!" Rachel Berry is screeching to a stop next to them with a beaming smile across her face. She reaches up to give both of them a hug and then immediately launches into a string of "I-missed-you"s and "Oh-my-god"s.

Mike excuses himself after catching up with Rachel and Sam for another five minutes or so, deciding to head to the bathroom inside the building. When he walks inside, he's immediately overwhelmed by the lights. And the floral arrangements. And the undeniably spot-on planning the whole venue must have undergone. It makes his stomach hurt.

Even the bathroom is gorgeous, which honestly shouldn't matter at all, but the faucets are gold and the walls are white with gold trimming and everything about it just screams "_perfect__"._

He stands in front of the sink, staring at his reflection in the mirror and wondering mildly if the bags under his eyes that he sees are visible to everyone else. Honestly, he's been _feeling_ so exhausted lately that maybe the bags are just a figment of his imagination. Maybe he's gone crazy.

"Mike?"

Expecting to see another familiar face, Mike stares at the mirror, where a tall, blonde man with a vintage suit and piercing green eyes whom he's never met before is just visible. Mike turns around to face him.

"Er, yeah. And you are?"

He apparently decides to ignore Mike's question, "I think someone's looking for you. In the powder room in the East wing."

"I- what?"

"In the powder room. In the East wing," he repeats as if Mike's some sort of idiot.

"Um- all right," Mike's curiosity gets the better of him, "I don't know where that is."

"When you walk out, take a right, walk to the end of the hallway, and take a left. It's the second door on your left," the man advises with a small smile.

"I- okay. Thanks? I guess?"

The man bows his head in acknowledgment before walking toward the row of urinals and Mike takes that as his cue to head out of the bathroom.

When he exits, finding himself standing in the hallway wondering if he should follow the man's instructions- and wondering why the hell he should in the first place- Mike can't help but feel kind of stupid. And lost.

But he usually has this need to follow instructions, so Mike heads to the right, walking briskly down the hallway as though he has even the smallest inkling as to what he's doing and where he's going, when in fact he's completely clueless. Once he gets to the end of the hallway, he makes a left. The hallway is just as beautiful as the rest of the building (of course), lined with beige and gold wallpaper and iron-cast lamps that light the way.

Once he reaches the second door on the left, which is closed, Mike hesitates for a moment before knocking carefully on the door. There's the sound of rustling from within and suddenly, the door swings open.

Good thing he ate something before arriving- if his blood sugar had been any lower, Mike swears he would have passed out right on the spot.

* * *

"_Mike_?"

Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god. How long has it been? Kurt and Blaine's engagement party- when had that been? A year and a half ago, maybe? Which means eighteen months. It's been eighteen months. Eighteen horrendously long months that had been his haven-

She is, however possible, tens of thousands of times more drop dead gorgeous than she had been the last time he saw her, which might have something to do with the makeup and the hair and all, but something inside of him tells him it might be a bit circumstantial as well. His jealousy's been known to throw things out of whack in his mind's eye.

He doesn't even know where to begin to look at her, so he drinks her in slowly, starting at her expertly coiffed hair to the subtle but immensely flattering makeup applied across her face, down to her exposed neck and shoulders, the the straps and the bodice of her well-fitted dress, to where the dress blossoms outward at her hips, to where it tapers off past her feet, leaving a delicate train behind her. Everything about her is just...

"Hi," Mike finally croaks, knowing that if he doesn't say at least one word soon enough, she'll have him carted off to the psych ward at the nearest hospital.

"I- _hi__!_ What- what are you doing here?"

When she speaks, it makes him want to hear her sing. It flashes him back to days when they used to lie on his bedroom floor together in the sticky summer heat and she'd sing little tidbits of numbers from her favorite musicals and he'd always beg her to sing _All I Do is Dream of You_ and she'd emit her little tinkling of laughter that she'd always do and tease him for his undying love for that song but she'd always comply and her singing would always carry him away...

"Um..." _Find your words, you idiot. _"Someone told me that someone was looking for me here?" After the words leave his mouth, he realizes how dumb that sounds.

"Oh," she looks confused, her forehead crinkling a little.

It suddenly hits him that the man from the bathroom was totally lying. That Tina Cohen-Chang had not been looking for him at all. That she had been busy getting ready for the most important day of her life and he had barged in, uninvited, talking crazy.

"You- you look breathtaking," Mike manages to murmur, stuck halfway between looking down at his feet and straight ahead at nowhere in particular. He feels like a fourteen year old boy again, unsure of how to talk to girls. Or at least, this _particular_girl.

The blush that appears in her cheeks makes him want to lean forward and kiss them, but that's no longer his place. And it hasn't been for years.

"Thanks," Tina says gently, smoothing her dress carefully, "You look pretty great yourself."

He gives her a soft smile, "It's not my job to look good today."

"I guess you're just pretty fantastic at doing that naturally," she says, a slight teasing tone in her voice.

"I guess I am."

They're quiet for a moment while they alternate between glancing shyly at each other and staring at their own hands, but Tina finally breaks the silence.

"Did- did you wanna talk or something?" Tina's always been the one to be honest and upfront about whatever's on her mind, and it worked out well in their relationship back in the day- it meant that whenever there was something he couldn't bring up on his own, she would do it tactfully.

"I don't know," Mike says quietly, now staring intently into her eyes, "Maybe?"

"Maybe?"

The real answer is yes. He wants so badly to unscrew the top of the jar he's kept all of his thoughts, emotions, and opinions in for nearly nine years now and let her soak in all the feelings he's been unable to dispose of despite his best efforts. He wants her to relive the nights he spent after coming home early from a date (usually insisting that he'd have to wake up early the next morning, which was usually to some extent true) and lying spreadeagled on his bed staring up at the ceiling and feeling sorry for himself. He wants her to see the pile of candy wrappers that would accumulate on his desk before finally tossing them into the trash can forlornly (his mom used to say that he was damn lucky his metabolism is so insanely fast, otherwise he would have gained like twenty pounds from all those Snickers bars). He wants to rewind and replay every moment he's ever been on a date with some girl that seemed perfectly nice but always had some little flaw that got him down, to show her how each one was worse than the last and all of them combined weren't even half as spectacular as she was. He wants to coil up his memories into old-fashioned mixtapes and play them for her one at a time so that she can see the past nine years of his life in slow motion, to see the things she's missed out on and the moments of his life she'd never be a part of.

"Maybe," he repeats.

They're quiet again. Painfully so. Tina turns to the full length mirror set up against the wall and inspects her reflection with a critical eye. He can see her staring at him through the mirror.

"So. Evan Finley," Mike says, scuffing his toe against the floor.

The look in her eyes is a complicated mixture of happiness, pain, pity, sorrow, and excitement.

"Yeah."

"When? How?"

"I met him in law school," she explains, understanding his skeletal questions perfectly, "But he wasn't a law student. I went to Berkeley for law school, did you know that?"

"Yeah." Mike had heard somewhere through the grapevine.

"Well, he was at Berkeley studying business. I ran into him at a fundraiser and we got to talking... And I guess the rest is history."

Mike desperately wants to ask her if she loves him- the way they always do in movies. But he knows deep down that that would be the dumbest question he could possibly come up with. Of course she loves him. She probably loves him with every fiber of her being. What he _really_ wants to know is if she loves Evan Finley more than she's ever loved him.

"He's great," Tina says softly, as though reading Mike's mind, "Really incredible."

"Oh." Mike isn't aware of how pathetic that sounds until the word leaves his mouth, and by then, it's too late. Much like this. Now. Here.

"I should probably get back to getting ready," Tina's voice is practically a whisper, "Turns out I've got a pretty big obligation in like half an hour. I like... have to be there," she half-jokes.

"Y-yeah," Mike nods numbly, "I guess... I guess I'll see you down the aisle, then."

It hurts- it _physically_ hurts to say that. Because throughout his twelve years of knowing Tina, he'd sort of built it up in his head that when he'd see her coming down the aisle, he would be standing up by the altar, waiting for her with his heart swelling to five times its original size, not sitting anonymously in the crowd, disappearing as just another face in her life. As nothing more than a fleeting memory, a broken piece of her past.

Mike wants more than anything to shout out: "Don't do it! Don't marry him. Remember me? Remember what we used to be?" He wants to collect her hands in his own and plead: "Don't you want to know if you and I are possible? I know we ended things when we went our separate ways but don't you want our paths to cross again? I've been living in the same state as you for so long now, thousands of miles away from our hometown, and there's always been this little part of me that thought that maybe, just maybe, you and I would meet once more and rekindle..._us_?" He wants to pull a rom-com movie stunt and put a stop to the wedding he's not a part of, to tell her not to go through with it, to ask: "Are you really ready to give up on us? To give up on the idea that maybe we're not over?"

But his life isn't a romantic comedy. His life isn't scripted, and his life isn't as simple as showing up on Tina Cohen-Chang's wedding day and telling her to ditch the months of planning she's sure to have put into it in order to run away with him. His life is a part of reality, and reality bites.

"I guess you will," Tina replies, giving him a sad smile, "C'mere." She's holding her arms out for a hug and Mike has to swallow _hard_ before going in for the hug.

As he wraps his arms around her, he feels like he's spiraling downward and headfirst into a cesspool of emotions, like he's a recovering alcoholic getting tempted with a tantalizing shot of tequila. She smells like... like high school, but also scarily unfamiliar, and he tries _hard_ not to inhale sharply during the hug. She's soft and warm and everything he remembered and more- like all of his daydreams rolled into one gorgeous bride-to-be. And not _his_ bride-to-be. Not that Tina Cohen-Chang would ever settle for being called "his".

He has to pull back eventually. He has to let go as she disentangles herself from him. He has to say goodbye to her, to say good luck and best wishes before giving her his best fake smile and heading out the door to go find his seat in the audience, amongst all her other friends and family. He has to move on.

When the ceremony starts, Mike raises his head to look up at the altar, and what he sees makes his insides twist dangerously inside his body.

Standing at the altar next to the minister, waiting for his bride to walk up the aisle, is a tall, blonde-haired man. In a vintage suit. With piercing green eyes.

Mike's heart plummets.

Listening to the wedding march play, watching the flower girl (a tiny blonde girl whom Mike doesn't recognize) skip down the aisle, standing up when the doors open for the bride, watching Tina grasping onto her father's arm as she beams and walks, hearing the whole room explode with awe and gentle applause at the sight of her, and watching her walk up to her future husband with a beautiful smile on her face would be far less heartbreaking if Evan Finley had been an asshole. Not some gentlemanly guy that secretly arranged for him to meet up with Tina one last time before she got married. He could only guess how well Evan knew him despite never having met him before- probably based on stories Tina's told him throughout the years.

Mike plays with his hands as the minister starts to speak, trying to block out the words, as though that would change the impending future. But the minister talking is nothing- _nothing_- compared to the moment when Tina and Evan start to exchange vows.

Mike doesn't cry. He's a man. He's not _supposed_ to cry. He commits himself to being strong-willed. In control of his feelings.

But as Tina promises to love Evan with all her heart for as long as they both shall live, as she binds her life to his, as she folds up her past, present, and future and presents it to him with the most heart-wrenchingly beautiful smile Mike has ever seen, Mike can feel a single tear tumbling down his cheek, disappearing almost as quickly as it appeared, fading away with the hopes he had kept wrapped up and tucked away for so, _so_ long.


End file.
